


sixes

by TheElusiveOllie



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Jokes, Bad Puns, Body Horror, Cessation of Existence, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:18:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8086819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveOllie/pseuds/TheElusiveOllie
Summary: A series of Five Things challenges I wrote for an RP on Dreamwidth. And here I thought I was done with writing oversaturated skeleton angst.





	1. five jokes that landed

> **i. i goat an even better question for ya.**

Mettaton's a real stand-up guy, he thinks, despite not having legs and being more of a "box on wheels" kind of deal, but the bottom line is that he's much more solid a host than people give him credit for. In love with himself? Abso _lutely,_ but he lets Sans perform at his resort all fancy-like, even if he doesn't call it "comedy" and just labels it "Sans" - guess his jokes are really just _that good,_ huh?  
Anyone who's been to more than one show, though, they know the humor's as worn-out as the dumpy skeleton delivering the jokes that land with a series of groans and pity chuckles.

He doesn't expect _King Asgore,_ of all monsters, to sit in on his routine one night. He's kind of a hard guy to miss, bigger than anything, huge curved horns and a frame that more or less blots out the light in an open doorway. For one, Asgore doesn't really...leave the New Home area. Ever. Thought crosses his mind that he should tighten up the humor for this go-around, but the king must've known what he was coming to see, right? Right.

Truth be told, King Asgore is the best audience he had that night. The guy was roaring with laughter and slapping his knee the whole time, even if occasionally it took him a minute to process his wordplay and punplay and god knows what else.

He didn't catch him after the show (no one ever does, as a general rule), but Sans got an anonymous letter thanking him for the show. He didn't need to do any real deducting to figure out who that looping handwriting belonged to.

> **ii. and one day i find this door...**

The air in Snowdin is always crisp and quiet, the snow settled thickly along the ground in white carpets. It'd look damn near picturesque if it wasn't always the same, day in and day out. You don't really get seasons Underground, it turns out. No sun and no sky to make 'em happen, one way or another.

He settles down in the same place he always does, rapping knuckles against the broad, silent door as he delivers knock-knock joke after knock-knock joke with effortless precision to empty silence. Keepin' watch for humans and not a single one comes through, so what else is he gonna do, huh? Might as well pass the time in a good and constructive manner.

 _Tok tok,_ his knuckles sound hollowly against the door. "Knock knock."

Then, outta nowhere, a soft voice replies, _"who is there?"_

Well. Ain't that something. Here he thought no one lived on the other side of that door.

He pauses, but not for very long before he forges on ahead. Might as well deliver, right?

"Dishes."

_"Dishes who?"_

With his typical frank, cheerful delivery, he says, "dishes a very bad joke."

My _god._ The laugh that splits the silence open like an overripe melon. He's never had anyone laugh that hard at his jokes, not even King Asgore. And as the laughter continues, his grin widens, and widens.

Maybe this job ain't so terrible after all.

> **iii. what? you didn't say that?**

The doc is buttoned up tighter than anyone Sans has ever met, and that's sayin' something. Joke after joke he hurls at that implacable exterior, and he continues to do nothing, say nothing, but he does that weird thing where he blinks his eyesockets very hard and shakes his head, as if thrown by the amount of stupidity and/or irrelevancy being thrown his way.

But there was one joke that Sans is sure made an impact, if only because the doc's response wasn't to tell him to shut up or get back to work, but to fix him with a peculiar stare that indicated that maybe he was struggling not to laugh.

 **DID YOU DOUBLE-CHECK THE CALCULATIONS?** he asks in that peculiar, visual speech of his, his hands cutting through the air like hot knives through butter.

"'Course I did, Doc, what d'you take me for?"

**BECAUSE I DO NOT RECALL THE NEED FOR EULER'S CONSTANT TO SHOW UP IN ANY OF THEM.**

Sans pauses, considering his work with a skeptical arch of a supraorbital ridge. He didn't _think_ he'd sprinkled any _e_ 's in there... "Huh."

Then he winks cheekily in the doc's direction. "Guess that was pretty irrational of me, huh?"

The doc stares at him for a long time. Longer, perhaps, than is socially acceptable, but Sans keeps smiling, frozen as he waits for the reaction he's looking for.

The doc pinches the ridge of bone over his nasal cavity.

**YOU ARE INSUFFERABLE.**

"Yeah, but you like me anyway."

The doc simply sighs.

> **iv. turn around and shake my hand.**

A branch snaps behind them as they walk, as easily as if it were a matchstick underfoot. The human jerks around, plainly terrified, plainly nervous. He shambles behind them, a blackened silhouette, but as soon as they twist around to view him more clearly, he's gone. Rampin' up the tension like this isn't something he usually does in the non-comedic way, but, y'know, why not, right? 

(Can't touch the anomaly, can't do a single thing to 'em, and he's fuming because this is why he does not make promises.)

When they reach the fence that's meant to keep 'em outta Snowdin (bars set too wide apart, of course, because his bro might be the best person Sans knows but his carpentry leaves a lot to be desired), he crunches closer, slippers thumping wetly over the snow and ice until he's right behind 'em. He can see them trembling. Maybe from the cold, maybe from fear. Maybe from both.

**"Human,"** he rumbles, low and gravelly. **"Don't you know how to greet a new pal?"**

He thrusts out a bony hand, phalanges raking the icy air.

**"Turn around, and shake my hand."**

They turn. Slowly, they turn, shuddering, their breath emerging in frosted white puffs of air. Their flesh-and-blood hand swings hesitantly up to meet his skeletal one until their palms meet.

_PPBTTHHHPPPT._

"Heh heh heh," Sans chuckles with a playful wink and a grin. "The ol' whoopee cushion in the and trick. It's _always_ funny."

The human stares at him in mingled astonishment and horror before their stoic expression cracks, flaking away like the patina it is, and they start to laugh.

Well, maybe this promise won't be so tough to keep after all.

> **v. deep inside you, i can feel it**

The knife they're holding clatters to the floor, the blade flashing with a terrifying, unnatural redness as it catches the light. He doesn't know what kind of magic can turn that thing into the thing it is, and he doesn't care.

The kid's shaking, all their sins and transgressions rushing up to meet them, and tears are running thick and fast down their cheeks. Yeah. Yeah, how's it feel, kiddo, to know that you've killed everyone you once loved? He keeps smiling passively, refusing to allow that vindictive edge to creep into his tone as he steps closer, closer, arms spread wide.

"C'mere, pal."

They need no further urging. They stumble forward like a broken-string marionette, collapsing into his arms as they start to sob in his jacket, burying their face in his shoulder, clinging to him tight, tight, tight as they can, and never letting go.

He pats their back once, even and reassuring.

_crkk_

His jacket opens, and the bones of his ribs stretch and elongate, skewering the human to the spot, pinning them in his venomous embrace like a butterfly to corkboard, and he catches the flashes of indignation and horror and betrayal in their expression as they try to pull away far too late.

His eyesockets are black and hollow and empty as he smiles at them, throwing every scrap of concentrated _spite_ at them as possible.

**"geeeettttt dunked on!"** he snarls, and pulls away. The rib bones squelch sickeningly, wetly, as they retract, and the human stares at him with their dark eyes burning like hot coals, and then, moments before he sees their SOUL starting to fragment and split apart ('til it all knits itself back together, or to be more specific, never gets broken in the first place), they make a soft, bemused wheezing sound. Darkly amused, so utterly taken aback that this shocked, angry, dying, wrong sound is all they can default to. It rasps painfully along the back of their throat, as if their vocal cords are bleeding.

Almost like a laugh.

Almost.

Well, it was pretty funny, wasn't it?

Yeah.

It was goddamn hilarious.

> **vi. and one that didn't.**

Papyrus is the best brother you could ask for. He believes in you no matter what, optimistic and warm-hearted to a fault, tolerates even your persistent garbage habits. Cleans up after you, makes sure you don't slack off on your job. Heck, sometimes Papyrus is the one thing that gets him out of bed in the morning, and he don't always even need any urging. Just the thought of him, the memory of him... 

The _memory_ of him.

Sans grins.

He grins at the snow, at the dust that must be in there, though hell if he can see it. Gray on white is awful hard to pick apart. The wind gusts at it, picking up pale granules of something that could be ice and could be dust, and he smiles, and he smiles, and he smiles.

"Why didn't the skeleton stop the human?" he asks the empty air evenly.

 _Why?_ says no one, not even the shadow of his brother's memory, his brother who would be screeching indignantly instead of allowing his brother to set up a joke that would simply incense him further.

"He wanted to get a _head_ of the game."

Heh heh heh.

Yep.

Sure is a laugh, that Sans. What a comedian.


	2. five fights that sans escaped

> **
> 
> i. throw me a bone here.
> 
> **

If anyone asks, Sans is, uh...he is really not a fighter. At all. Why solve something with fighting when you could just go out and grab a bite? Good food, good friends, bad laughs. That is his policy. 

Which _really_ makes things tough when your favored greasy food joint is a bit rowdier than usual. The Canine Unit is _celebrating_ following the successful capture of another human (human SOUL, rather, but Sans ain't gonna be the one to say it), and before Sans knows it he finds himself facing down Greater Dog's greater bulk as he pants exuberantly, evidently ready to throw down and tussle the way the most dogs do. And that would be fine, really, except that Sans is a great deal more _fragile_ than like, ninety-nine percent of all monsters. Can anyone else boast 1 HP? "Boast" ain't even the right word for it but, no. No, he's pretty sure he's unique in that regard. 

Lucky him. 

"Okay, big fella," says Sans, slow and easy, trying not to let any of his wariness bleed through in his smile. "Let's just take it easy." 

He manages to sidestep the Dog as he hurls himself at him and lands with a heavy _whumpf_ on the floor. 

"You're not gonna let up, are ya?" he says, cocking his head to one side skeptically. He gets no response but an eager pant, but that's about the only answer Sans requires. 

He'd sigh but, you know. No lungs. So instead he reaches under his jacket, rummages about for a bit, and comes away with one of his rib bones in hand. The Dog's ears shoot up as though electrified, and his panting doubles in pitch and speed. 

"All right, buddy. C'mon." 

And he wings the bone out through the open window. 

Greater Dog follows. With, uh...with enthusiasm. Considerable enthusiasm. _So much enthusiasm_ that the impact of his enthusiasm leaves a halation of broken glass scattered in the snow. 

"Sorry, Grillbz," Sans says levelly. 

Grillby, for his part, simply sighs. ****

> **ii. a job to pay the bills.**

"You can't sign up for sentry duty and then just _skip_ combat training," Undyne grumbles without preamble, drumming blue-scaled fingertips impatiently on the countertop as the teakettle begins to emit a high-pitched whistle. Sans never remembered the buy the kinda tea she liked, but Papyrus, bless him, always kept a stockpile of the stuff in the cupboards in case she visited. A real shame he's out this time around, but maybe that's for the best. Their house can't take being burned to the ground like Undyne's can. 

And anyway, Sans is ninety-five percent sure that Undyne chose this timeframe for that reason exactly. She's hear to talk to him, not his brother. 

Sans shrugs fluidly as he watches Undyne click off the stove and steep the tea with fingers that know all the steps implicitly. She's been learnin' the ropes from Asgore, hasn't she? "I dunno what you want me to say, Undyne. I ain't much of a fighter." 

"And what if a human comes through? Huh?" She crosses her arms over her chest. "Papyrus, I know he can handle it. He'll be really freakin' _nice_ about it, but he's tough!" 

"That's my bro," says Sans with cheery indolence, "nice and tough." 

"Stop changing the subject!" She crosses the room and yanks Sans off the couch where he's been lounging for the past hour or so, wrenching him upright so she can deliver one of her fierce, stern, one-eyed glares. "I've got a Royal Guard to run and sentries to train, and I'm not gonna be responsible for losing one of my sentries to a _human!"_

"And what would you suggest," Sans says softly, eyeing her wearily, "huh?" 

Undyne thrusts out a hand. A low thrumming charges the air, and one of her bright blue spears materializes in her palm. 

"You and me! One on one!" She's using that booming voice she generally reserves for making situations as _dramatic as possible,_ and sure, if Sans had any hair to speak of he's sure it'd be standing on end. But he simply watches her tiredly. "We're doing this!! Give it all you've got!!" 

"Undyne - " 

"I DON'T SEE YOU MAKING THE FIRST MOVE!" She flashes a sharklike grin down at him, her good eye flashing. "Gimme your best shot!!" 

Sans watches her brazenly confronting him in his own home, shoulders squared and stance wide. His eyesockets shutter at half-mast. He tosses a handful of knucklebones in her direction that dissipate in the same instant they form. She bats them away with a scornful glower. 

"Is that the best you can do?!" 

"I'm not gonna get outta this," he says tiredly, "am I?" 

"Nope! So DON'T HOLD BACK!!" 

He watches her for a long moment, then, with a neat twist of his left hand, indexes her personal values and sends her zooming across her personal x-axis, SOUL blue and subjected to a force of gravity that propels her right out the door and facefirst into the snow. 

"Ok." ****

> **iii. what's a kid like you doing in a place like this.**

Monsters are nice, generally speaking. Warmth, love, compassion, all that good and positive stuff, that's all pretty much requisite for a monster's SOUL to exist. Not to say bad monsters can't _happen,_ mind. But that's what LOVE is for. That's why some monsters hoard it tight, because it's the only damn thing that makes it harder to care, that might make bleeding-heart tendencies easier to dismiss and ignore. 

Not that Sans is one to forgive that kinda thing. Especially not now. 

"Put him down," Sans says evenly, trying to puff himself up and look as big as possible. It ain't a simple feat. He's barely two feet off the ground, still a little babybones, and Papyrus's wailing ain't making it any easier to bear. 

"Or _what?"_ snaps one of the monsters, the one who has his little brother tucked under his arm like the world's smallest sack of potatoes. They can't be much older than Sans is, but they're a whole lot bigger. And a whole lot stronger. "What're you gonna do, huh? Rattle at me?" 

"Put him _down,"_ he says again, and he can feel the lights in his eyesockets dulling into blackness. But it's hard to pull off intimidating when you're several feet shorter than the competition, and don't look like much on top of it - no spines, no claws, no fangs. Just a squat little skeleton kid who might as well be pleading that they _let his brother go._

Papyrus's yelps and hollers dim down into silence, and now he's bein' quiet. He's bein' real quiet. And that's...that's no good. Papyrus is loud, he's exuberant, he's always energetic, and so when he's quiet, when he's _quiet,_ that can't mean a single good thing and Sans can't see his face is he crying is he okay did they _hurt_ him oh god please please not him please - 

"Here's what you're gonna do," says one of the monster's friends, maybe a sibling or something, they're just as long and lanky and spiky as their ringleader but _he doesn't care, is Papyrus okay,_ "you don't do exactly what we say, this little _pipsqueak_ is gonna - " 

They don't get much further than that. Abruptly, their ringleader starts to howl in agony, and a split second later, Sans can see why. 

Papyrus has sunk his little chompers into their hand, _strong_ jaw on him, geez, because they're waving their hand around and he's clinging on through the strength of his mandibles alone until the point where he _no longer is_ and he's sailing in a parabolic arc over everyone's heads. 

Sans is there to catch him, gentle as you please, even if he's gotta materialize midair to do it, and then he's gone again in the next second. 

"Thanks, bro," he whispers to the wailing bundle in his arms when they both pop back into visible space next to a patch of Echo Flowers. That spurt of courage seems to have wrung him all out, and now he's sobbing, clutching at Sans's overlarge jacket with bony fingers. "You did good, bro. You did real good. It's okay. It's okay. I gotcha." 

He holds him tight to his ribcage, back of one hand over his skull. 

"I gotcha." ****

> **iv. and the fire rained on judgment day.**

How many times has he stood in this gold-tinted hall and passed that icy judgment on the human, quiet and unassuming? How many times have they listened to him prattle on about EXP, about LOVE, about tenderness in their heart? How many times did they go back and kill someone, just to see what he'd say about it? 

His hands are fists in the pockets of his jacket. This is...boy, this is hard to really quantify. Feels like anger, cold and calcified in his SOUL, but that can't be right, no. No, he doesn't get angry. 

It's grief. 

It's gotta be. 

The human stands there. Locket 'round their neck, dagger in their hand. Their face folded into its typical emptiness, awaiting his judgment. 

"This is an odd thing to say," he says, his tone perfectly neutral and lighthearted and pleasant as always, "but...if you have some sort of special power...isn't it your responsibility to do the right thing?" 

The human watches him for a moment. Then, slowly, as if the very action pains them, they jerk their head in a nod. 

"Ah," says Sans lightly. "I see." 

He shuts his eyesockets. 

When they open, they're black holes bored into his skull, leering at them from the dark, and his silly little font drops away into something edged, almost serifed - almost, but not quite. 

**"Then why'd you kill my brother?"**

... 

The human don't have much to say to that. Never have much to say about anything, it turns out. But that's fine. He lets them go. 

It's what Papyrus would've wanted. ****

> **v. i don't like your new friend.**

Papyrus comes home a bit more battered, sometimes. Sans would pretend not to notice, but that'd be a dirty, dirty lie. He always notices. He notices everything. No reason his brother, who is on _sentry duty_ for god's sake, should be coming back lookin' like he's been tossed through a meat grinder and back. 

Sans knocks on his door, and Papyrus lets him in. Of course he does. He'd let him in even if he were angry, and sometimes Papyrus's big, big heart is just too big for his own good. He'd fall on the first sword presented to him if he thought it'd help someone become a better person. 

He has, in many respects. 

"Heya," says Sans, watching his brother sit on his racecar bed and be...uncharacteristically silent. "What's eatin' ya?" 

"I don't know what you mean!" says Papyrus, going for affronted and landing somewhere in the realm of scared. "I am very great, as always, brother!" 

"Uh-huh," says Sans. He reaches over, gentle as you please, and plucks something off from Papyrus's comically brightly-painted "armor" so he can hold it in front of his eyesockets. 

It's a petal. A golden petal. 

"I figure," Sans says wearily, "that you got somethin' on your mind. I also figure you're not gonna tell me about it, even if I start pushin' ya. So." 

His phalanges close over the petal, crumpling it into a spongy ball, and drop it on the floor. 

"Lemme know," he says softly. "Y'know I'll stand by ya no matter what. Right?" 

"O-Of course!" says Papyrus, but the typical pomp and vigor is all but drained from the words. "Of course I would!" 

Sans smiles. Papyrus smiles back, pained and not at all reassuring. He waits. He waits. He waits. The silence between them stretches to its thinning point, and then past that. 

When it becomes obvious that nothin' he does or says will convince Papyrus to say a word, Sans nods to himself, and turns to leave. 

"That's what I thought." ****

> **vi. and one that he didn't.**

It's such a nice day out. 

'Course, Sans has no clue, really. It could be a terrible day out. It could be storming, or raining, or the clouds could be blotting out the sun. It could be an apocalyptically terrible day out. He wouldn't know. They don't get the sun down here, Underground. 

He's been swigging ketchup straight from the bottle for the past few hours. Not the magic stuff. Not the stuff that dissolves right on entry. No, the stuff that sits thick and heavy inside him, so he knows that when they land that hit, which they will, because he can't keep dodging forever, it'll split him open like overripe, rotting fruit, and the red will come spilling out, and the _look_ on their face... 

Well, he always did wanna leave 'em laughing. Pity no one's left to enjoy the joke. Just an old, sad king, a psychopathic flower, and the kid that's carved swathes through the Underground, eliminating every monster in their way. Every single one. 

Undyne stopped 'em for a bit, but she really only slowed 'em down in the long run. Killed 'em plenty of times, he's pretty sure, he was watchin' the feeds like everyone, but after a while, well...eventually the kid wises up. Memorizes the patterns. Knows how to move and dodge in precisely the right way. 

They sound of their footsteps over golden tile is the dirge that will sing him to sleep. Sans grins wide at them as they draw near, the knife in their hand shining cherry-bright, as though soaked with a blood that doesn't exist. Maybe with their own. He's got no clue. 

He could be goin' with all the others. He could be evacuating. But he knows how things boil down here. He knows that there won't be anything left to evacuate, if this kid keeps pushing on like they do. LV 19, and bristling on the edge of an asymptote he _cannot_ allow them to cross, but knows they will. They will because they can. They will because they think the should. Because they feel they have to, simply because the option is _there._

They will because they're curious. Because they're cruel, maybe. Their face is as blank as ever. 

"Heya," he says easily, as if greeting an old friend. In many ways, he is. He's got that photograph sequestered in a drawer somewhere. He knows what they did. What they took away. "You've been busy, huh?" 

The hall is silent but for the syncopation of the human's breathing. 

"So," says Sans with false cheer, "I've got a question for ya. Do you think that even the worst person can change...? That anyone can be a good person, if they just try?" 

The kid steps forward, short, brusque, deliberate. 

Sans laughs. 

"All right. Well, here's a better question." 

His eyesockets open to emptiness, a bleak, hollow blankness that glares into the kid's LOVE-filled SOUL. 

"Do you wanna have a bad time? 'Cause if you take another step forward...you are REALLY not gonna like what happens next." 

The human steps forward. They don't expect this from him, they think. He's gotta be all bluff, right? Just a harmless funnybones, heh. 

Yep. He sure is a funny guy. 

_Sorry, old lady. This is why I never make promises._

Maybe he says that part aloud. Doesn't really matter in the end. 

Because that's when the kid's world detonates.


	3. five times sans didn't listen to papyrus

> **i. sans please i am just trying to live**

* (It's a dirty sock with a series of notes on it.)

SANS! PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SOCK!

* ok.

DON'T PUT IT BACK DOWN! MOVE IT!

* ok.

YOU MOVED IT TWO INCHES! MOVE IT TO YOUR ROOM!

* ok.

AND DON'T BRING IT BACK!

* ok.

IT'S STILL HERE!

* didn't you just say not to bring it back to my room?

FORGET IT!

> **ii. you're gonna rock my world.**

"SANS!" says Papyrus with his typical shrill, enthusiastic gusto. "I have been thinking!"

"That's dangerous."

"I have been thinking," says Papryus, plowing over Sans's commentary with stalwart abandon, "that we should get a pet!"

"A, uh...a what?" Sans arches a supraorbital ridge at his brother from across the room, eyeing the back of his skull as he bustles about cleaning the latest assorted detritus from the living room floor. He'd expected a lotta things to come outta his brother's mouth but that? That was in the low hundreds, maybe. "A pet?"

"I think it would be nice!" Papyrus plants the broom firmly in one place like he's mounting a flag, thrusting a hand out in front of him, palm out, envisioning something in that grandiose, Papyrus way. "Can't you see it, brother?! Can't you just picture it?"

"Where're we gonna keep it?" says Sans, snapping Papyrus out of his fantasy perhaps a bit more abruptly than intended.

"Where will we - why, in the house! And we can take it for walks, and it would be, my, friend!" Papyrus starts to sweep a little more emphatically. "It would really brighten the place up!"

Sans watches him go about cleaning the house with renewed vigor. "Is this really about wantin' a pet?" he says softly.

"Of course!" Papyrus huffs, as though betrayed by the very idea that Sans would question it. "Of course it is! What else could it possibly be about?"

Sans thinks of the friends Papyrus longs for, the attention he never gets, the patronizing, verbal pats on the head he gets from the Canine Unit. He thinks of the people he wishes he could confide in and never does. He thinks of Undyne, who trains him tirelessly, who loves his brash exuberance that colors everything he does, and how even she doesn't know if she can allow him to ever join the Royal Guard, a job that would put him in the line of fire. He thinks of how Papyrus hinged himself on that thing, that one thing, as if it would bring everything together and solve his problems with effortless pomp and glamour.

"All right, bro," says Sans, settling back into the couch. "I'll see what I can do."

A week later, he proudly presents their brand new pet rock. Papyrus refuses to claim ownership.

But at least he feeds it every day.

> **iii. is anybody out there?**

"I don't like it here," Papyrus had said, tugging at Sans's hand. Sans had shushed him, knelt down at eye-level to murmur quietly to the skeleton kid that it was gonna be okay, they were gonna be in and out. They were just ducking into Waterfall to pick up some supplies and then they'd be right out again, and it'd be fine. It'd all be okay.

He could be such a goddamn _idiot_ sometimes.

Sans didn't even know he could move that fast, once it registered that Papyrus, who'd been clinging to his legbones tightly since they arrived in Waterfall, was no longer at his side. In fact, he was no longer anywhere. Sans streaked through the marshy wetland, sweeping the place frantically for any sign of his little brother, any sign at _all_. How could he have just let him _go_ like that? This was his - this was his _job_ , he's supposed to take _care_ of him and what kind of person just _lets_ his little brother disappear like that?

If _anything_ happens to Papyrus - all he can do is pray to whatever deity might be listening that _nothing happens to Papyrus_. He retraces his steps. He pops into every neighborhood, asks every monster he sees if anyone's run into a little skeleton kid, but all he gets are shrugs and blank stares.

And that's when he hears it.

_"SAAAAANS!"_

In the blink of an eye, he's at the source of the sound, but there's not a kid to be seen. Nothing but the bioluminescent, electric blue stalks of a couple dozen Echo Flowers, swaying gently in the nonexistent breeze.

He hears it again, mere inches from his aural orifices, breathed out from the Flower closest to him.

 _"SAAAAANS!"_ The other flowers pick it up, a rising-falling flare-and-spiral of _"aaans, aaans, aaans, aaans,"_ murmured across the flowers' upturned faces.

He triangulates the source of the cries, following them as they swell in volume and clarity, moving away when they fade into bleeding-edged obscurity. Until, finally, finally, he glimpses the familiar silhouette, crouched on the ground, arms wrapped around knees, making quiet, unhappy noises.

"Papyrus!" The surrounding Flowers burst into a choir of _"pyrus, pyrus, pyrus,"_ but he doesn't care, it doesn't _matter_ , he wraps his arms tightly around his brother and lets his sob into his jacket with relief and lingering terror.

"I know," he whispers softly, eyesockets screwed shut. "I know, I know. I'm sorry, bro. I'm sorry. That's the last time I don't listen to you."

It's a lie, but he still means it from the bottom of his fluttering, trapped-bird weakling of SOUL.

> **iv. did you think that you were alone**

"I wish you would not go to Grillby's so often," says Papyrus, without any prefacing whatsoever, perched on the arm of the couch as if waiting for the precise moment Sans would awaken. For all he knows, he would be.

"What makes you think I'm goin' to Grillby's?" says Says with a yawn that manages to crack his jaw without actually opening his mouth.

"Where else would you go?" says Papyrus, impatiently. Sans makes the command decision to let that one lie like a sleepin' dog. Like a sleepin' skeleton. There's a general sleeping theme.

"All right, bro. You got me." He puts up his hands, palms out, in a weary gesture of surrender. "I'll cut back."

Papyrus looks away, and it occurs to Sans that he maybe doesn't believe him. The bite of that realization eats at him more than he could've ever expected, and he doesn't know what to say to that.

"You know you can tell me these things," Papyrus says, trying for indignant. Trying for indignant, but just ending up sounding as worried as he probably is. "Whatever it is that's wrong. You can tell me."

Sans does his best to meet his brother's eyes, dark and worried and painfully sincere.

"Okay," says Sans quietly. "Okay. Tomorrow, all right? I'll tell ya tomorrow."

Papyrus doesn't say anything, but Sans can see from the way his frame straightens up when he stands that he believes him.

Too bad tomorrow never comes. The same day just happens like before, over and over again, and Sans makes sure to cover his tracks a little better next time.

> **v. this is why i hate promises.**

"You know you can tell me anything," says Papyrus confidently, and it's a bad day, it's a real bad day because Sans hasn't gotten out of bed, hasn't so much as budged for the past handful of hours or so. He can't muster the energy. He can't do much of anything. It might be morning, or noon, or night, but in the end it doesn't matter, because Papyrus is sitting at his bedside and declaring that he will never leave him.

 _Don't make promises you can't keep,_ Sans almost says. But he doesn't say it. He doesn't say anything. He listens to the only good thing he ever did sit beside him and talk about his day, talk about his interests, talk about anything that comes to mind, because he knows how it has to be when Sans is like this. They don't ever talk about it. They don't really need to, and he thinks that, maybe, neither of 'em really know how. That's okay, though. It's gotta be okay. It'll be okay.

"- but it will be all right!" says Papyrus, unconsciously mirror the spiraling grayness of Sans's thoughts. "The Great Papyrus will make sure of that!"

"Y'promise?" Sans mumbles, slitting one eyesocket open to stare at his brother, trying not to let the despair crack the words in two.

"Of course I do!!" Papyrus says, hands to hips, striking quite the heroic pose for a skeleton who's sitting on his lazybones brother's bed. All that's missing is the dramatic gust of wind. The same wind that picks up his scarf and makes it flutter, capelike, behind him, when he faces the human. Regardless of the outcome, the shape it makes, red against white, always stands out so bright and clear, the fluidly-shifting sinusoid, the snap of fabric in the chill breeze.

Sans shuts his eyesockets again.

 _Don't make promises you can't keep,_ he almost says, again, but he doesn't. It doesn't matter.

One way or another, it doesn't matter.

> **vi. and one time he did.**

There's not much left of a monster once they've been dusted. Everything goes down with them. Clothing, any belongings they might've had on their person, everything. Papyrus had folded as easily as a house of cards, the pink leather of a glove slamming into his body and reducing it to gray, fluttering powder.

He can never be sure what parts of the snow and ice are the remnants of his brother and what parts are just...ice. Traditionally, you're supposed to spread those remains on something the monster loved. Sans can't say Papyrus loved this particular patch of ground, not any more than he loved any other part of Snowdin.

It'll have to do.

He rakes phalanges through the snow, hoping vaguely that some part of his brother's dust is in the handful he scoops up and lets filter lifelessly through the bones of his hand. 

_W-WELL, THAT'S NOT WHAT I EXPECTED... BUT... ST... STILL! I BELIEVE IN YOU! YOU CAN DO A LITTLE BETTER! EVEN IF YOU DON'T THINK SO!_ The echoes could be the dust that may or may not be in his hand (Schrodinger's dust? Nah, sounds stupid), or they could be just Sans, Sans and his stupid, self-autolyzing brain dredging up the memories that flicker past like moths. _I...I PROMISE..._

"Yeah," whispers Sans. "You promise, huh?"

He stands up and shakes his hand free of dust, of snow, of whatever might've been in his hands.

"Okay, bro. You win." His eyesockets are hollow as he grins down at the nondescript patch of snow where Papyrus had made his last, doomed stand, where he must've known he would die, where he chose to stand and passively accept it _anyway,_ because anyone, anyone can be a good person, can't they? Anyone can be a good person if they _just try._

Sans doesn't crunch through the snow. He doesn't do much of anything. One second he's in Snowdin, and the next he's just outside New Home, striding easily through the grayed-out hallways.

"Let's give 'em another chance, huh?"


	4. five times sans gave up hope

> **i. were you looking for a reason?**

The thing about this, uh, this whole "deal" is that there's no real threshold, no perceptible _point_ where things go from _bearable_ to _not._ There's the slow, inevitable decline, sure, but even that isn't really charted out in a strictly linear fashion. You don't wake up one morning and realize you're not okay. It doesn't hit you like a sack of bricks, or a sack of anything. There's never a suitably dramatic event to dovetail into it. You just maybe catch yourself thinking, as idly as you would consider a craving for Popato Chisps, that it'd be real nice not to be alive anymore. 

He's sitting next to the fishing pole stuck in the snow, the part of the surrounding Snowdin area that nobody really goes to, when it occurs to him that maybe this ain't such a normal thing to be thinking. Thing is, there's no tactful way of mentioning this to anybody. To run low on hope, run dry on it, that can be a death wish for some monsters. Has been for several others. When you're made up of magic, when intent is everything, the wrong bad thoughts can send you plummeting down a one-way track to Falling Down. What a damn pleasant, polite, neat-and-tidy euphemism _that_ is, huh? _Falling Down._ As if it isn't horrifying. As if it ain't the end-all-be-all it is. As if it doesn't leave behind dust and a string of worried loved ones and _so much worse._

But that's monsters for ya. Dressing up all their pain in something nice and neat and brightly-packaged so it's all a bit easier on the eyes. Wouldn't want their grief to be an _inconvenience,_ now would we? Nah. Gotta make that kinda thing palatable. For everyone.

And hey, it's not like he's actively raring to snuff out that little light of his. He's not _that_ far gone, weary and wrung-out little lump that he is. Too much effort, for one. Even if it's 1 HP, takes little more than a trip on the steps or a misplaced bullet or just plain _not moving outta the way fast enough,_ the fact of the matter is that, ultimately, it don't matter. That's the thing about time being a flat circle and all that good stuff. Only thing to come of dying is the host of unpleasant memories that come from _remembering_ what it was to die, on the off-chance that he does, which is _not_ a set in stone thing but either way, _either way._

Either way, it just isn't worth it.

Story of his damn life.

And, hey. Besides. 

Hasn't he got a job to do?

> **ii. maybe she's not feeling anything at all**

**"Go to hell,"** he says into the receiver, clicks the call off, and tosses the phone onto the bedspread. The bedspread Papyrus lovingly made this morning, and...hah, nope. He's not goin' there. 

He blips to Hotland instead. But the lab's empty, the lights off, the computers dead, everything unplugged and empty. Like whoever lived here was thinkin' of maybe going on a real great vacation. From the thin layer of dust starting to accumulate atop the monitor and the surface of her desk and the figurines she never...well, by the looks of things, he's guessing she's already embarked on wherever it is she plans on going.

As if he don't know perfectly well.

He doesn't even stop in Waterfall. The people there are still mourning the loss of their fallen hero. He'd watched her cling to life gamely, refusing to acknowledge it as her body had drifted apart, thick droplets of...of _her_ sliding off down her head until she decoalesced completely and her SOUL went with her.

Last stop, though. Last stop before things maybe go a new direction, assuming they do. He shouldn't assume that they do, really he shouldn't, 'cause one of these days he might just get caught in something he can't shake, and _then_ where would he be? Not there, in an ideal world. Heh heh. Not there.

He rests the palm of his hand against the smooth stone door separating the RUINS from the rest of the monster world. Doesn't knock. Doesn't need to know. He knows what he'd find, should he cut to the chase, so to speak, and end up on the other side. A whole lotta dust, mixed with a whole lotta nothing.

He grins, hands shoved in his pockets. That _t 0_ is gonna roll around and this'll all have never happened. Not in the conventional way that things "happen," anyway.

"Any day now," he says softly. "Know you got it in ya, buddo. This can't be what you want, huh?"

But hell, maybe it is.

Maybe they just wanted to see him suffer.

> **iii. you won't remember this**

It stands there, and it has no conception of what it is, just that it, evidently, exists, and there is something it should be fighting. So it fights. It fights because it has to, because it is ordered and expected and required of it, and as it exerts a gravitational force on the SOUL in front of it and weighs it down with blue magic, it realizes it is saying words, dull and shaking with a tension it does not understand. 

"Just give up," it says, the words trailing limply from between its hollow, hollow grin. "I did."

There is a shape standing beside it, pronouncing happily, "I must capture a human!"

It is familiar. It is...distantly, familiar. It thinks it should know it. It almost wants to turn to it, say something inane, but it...

It would not matter. This is not its function. Its function is requisite, and it is to seed the SOUL with magic and strike at it until it breaks. 

But it does not break. It persists. And its owner...its _owner_ as a face that it cannot put a name to, a warm look that it does not understand, as it says something, something like...

_I'll think about what I've done. I promise._

Aw, _kid,_ don't you know how much he hates p̈͊͋̆͌҉ȑ̥̰̪̹̫̿̒͊̓͢óͨ̒ͫ͌͑̚҉̹mî̃͐̽ͧ҉̠̱s̙͙͙̮͖̃͑͂́̈̽̕è̷̓̔̋̀s̥̗̤͙̈́͗ͥ̌͋?͚̜̖̩̔̋

He...it. It does not... _it_ does not...it does not does not does not does _not_ it is _not accepting this_ because it does not make sense, it does not have any strong feelings about promises one way or another, it does not have strong feelings on _anything_ because it is not a person or even really a _thing,_ it is nothing, it is nothing, it is **ɴ̶̷̲̅ᴏ̶̷̲̅ᴛ̶̷̲̅ʜ̶̷̲̅ɪ̶̷̲̅ɴ̶̷̲̅ɢ̶̷̲̅.**

It seems like it's trying to remember...

Its mind snaps away from whatever trend it is trending toward. It does not know what it said, what it _did,_ why the words snagged at the edges of its SOUL (it does not acknowledge its nature) or caught at its laminar non-thoughts like claws in cloth (it _does not_ acknowledge its _nature_ ), and it does not care. It does not _care_ because it is not _made_ to care and that is not its function.

It does not care.

So it does not say anything but the words that come to its mouth, that spring up mindlessly and without conscious thought.

"Why even try?"

> **iv. it's snow problem**

No one really bothers with the Snowman. Sans ain't even really sure if they're a monster or just a heap of ice that up and gained sentience one day, the same way one can never be sure if which rocks are monsters who're being real quiet and which ones are just rocks. 

(He makes the mental note, for the umpteenth time, to feed his pet rock, just in case the thing _is_ sentient. He's never actually checked to make sure.)

(Not like it really matters. He knows he'll forget by the time he heads home again, but it's the sentiment of the thing.)

Anyway. You didn't come here to read about rocks. You came here to...well, let's be frank, you came here to indulge in some masochistic fantasies regarding one existentially depressed yours truly. But at this particular juncture, you're here for the Snowman. Because that's who Sans is here for, even if he doesn't do much of anything but sit down with a bump beside them and offer them a hotdog, fresh from the collapsible grill he's got set up at his sentry station. The sentry station he's currently neglecting to all hell but hey, union-regulated breaks and all. He'll take what he can get.

 _No thank you,_ the Snowman says, politely, and Sans shrugs as he tucks in.

"Suit yourself."

He munches on his 'dog, and the Snowman says nothing, as they are wont to do most of the time, and Sans, well, he says nothing, partially to keep in vein with the companionable silence they've got goin' here but mostly because his mouth is full of 'dog.

 _Do you ever think of the Surface?_ the Snowman says, out of _nowhere,_ slow and wistful.

Sans finishes his 'dog in one final, decisive bite and wipes the grease off on his jacket, leaving streaks of char smeared against the blue to join the months-old patina of the stuff left there, as he thinks long and hard about what to say.

 _I think everyone does,_ the Snowman amends, before Sans can think of anything of real substance to say in response. _The sun must be terribly nice up there. Hot enough to melt snow, don't you think?_

This would typically be the point in time where Sans would ask something to the effect of, "hey, uh...you okay there, buddy?" Because, uh, in his experience (his experience is atypical, but nobody needs to know that, now do they?) people don't generally long to embrace the thing that will kill them.

(But Papyrus sure did, didn't he? Didn't even bat an eyesocket when he got gutted for it, huh? Heh, yeah, no, he just took at _face value,_ looked at the thing that would kill him, and spread his arms wide, affirming the goodness that _must be inside them_ even as he dissolved into dust on the ground.)

 _Yes,_ says the Snowman quietly. _I think the Surface must be nice._

Sans, uh.

Well, Sans is a real jerk, and he thinks everybody knows it. Everybody knows it, but is too polite to say anything. But at some point he reaches the nadir of his tolerance for this conversation, for the note of longing in the poor bastard's voice as they lament about a Surface they will never see, even as they wish obliquely for their own death in the process, for the photograph left in a drawer in a room at the back of the house, locked away where no one can see it, where everyone is _smiling_ and on the Surface and _happy_ and, heh, boy, that sure must not've lasted very long, huh, 'cause here he is, back in Snowdin like always.

 _What do you think?_ the Snowman asks.

The empty air does not respond.

Like the real jerk he is, Sans is gone.

> **v. but you already know what's coming don't you?**

The words have been said so many times that they're all but meaningless noise at this point, an atonal collection of noises that ain't foolin' anyone, that the kid's heard dozens, maybe hundreds of times before. They could tell you better than he could. But they don't. They never say much of anything. They just keep coming at him with that red-stained Knife cutting red arcs in the air, always missing, always always _always_ missing. They don't say much, as a general rule, but he knows their look. The set of their shoulders, the tightness of their jaw, the glint of those dark eyes. They're real bent on this end goal. Real stalwart. Real, real _Determined._

He looks at them with a hollow bilateral blackness bored into his skull. "Survive THIS, and I'll show you my special attack."

And then he takes 'em for the ride of their life.

The corridor they're in stretches, distorts. A veritable slalom of ulnas spurt from the ground, twisting, twirling, and the kid has to plot their course down to the _pixel_ \- oh, I'm sorry, down to the _centimeter._ Better? Not as on-the-nose, maybe? We'd hate to have that, wouldn't we?

Space stretches. Maybe time does do. He pulls out every stop, every trick, everything he's got to his arsenal of pitifully-low damage output that he optimized because he _had_ to, because even if feeling helpless sucks, even if knowing he's helpless sucks, it sucks a whole lot more if you don't try to do _something_ about it. This he knows plainly and without thinkin' too hard on it. That's just one of those things you pick up after a time.

They reach the "bottom" of that poorly-defined space, don't even miss a beat before they're bracing hands and feet against the ground and springin' upwards - sideways, whatever, their x-axis is skewed to hell and back at this point - to dodge the clawing wave of femurs that spring up to impale them. Not a spot of KARMA on their SOUL, and then he digs the tip of one phalanx into the bright curve of space and tugs and oh, lookie here, we're not where we were, are we? Nah, the whole layout has changed, and he's altering their trajectory, indexing values faster than he can calculate them (but to hell with it, right? Not like it matters, hah) and the kid's staying on top of every shift in their personal gravity, every direction their blue SOUL gets yanked, riding out each switchoff with effortless abandon.

That's when it all settles in a little more completely.

'Course, he'd known it was an inevitability. Known that ultimately, they'd get to him. They'd learn every trick, get him to play every card so they could predict each unpredictability. And from the way they're movin', swift and businesslike and unerring and _reflexive,_ he knows that it ain't the first time they've done this.

He loops four, five, nah, better make it _six_ times with those canid skulls of his, firing off vibrant streaks of energy, staggering the otherwise unbroken rhythm by increments in the hopes that it'll trip 'em up, if marginally. All he needs is one mistake and their SOUL gets seeded with the cloying, thick pinkness of KR seeping into their flesh, their veins, the marrow of their bones.

They're gonna make it.

He already knows it before the last cycle of blasters has finished firing off, and he seizes their SOUL in a sort of rank desperation, left eyesocket flaring with that burning spike amber-and-cyan that always feels like someone's holding a hot coal to his socket.

They crash into the walls but the knife might as well be welded to their hands, and deep, deep somewhere in that impassive glare, he can see the undeniable gleam of victory.

They've already won.

They know it, and so does he.

But he rattles off the lines of the script anyway, lets that dialogue tree unfurl in white-on-black inflorescence, and pulls the last, interminable trick outta his sleeve as he waits for them to cut him down.

> **vi. and one time he didn't.**

"So," says Sans brightly, startling her out of whatever reverie had her standing there, spellbound, watching garbage trail off the edge of the cliffside, carrying scraps of trash and detritus down, down, down to wherever stuff like that goes. "Come here often?" 

Alphys clasps a claw to her chest and stammers out something, but he simply shrugs and plashes nearer until he's standing beside her, overlooking the yawning, cavernous abyss that opens beneath them.

"Really somethin', huh?" he says softly. "Ever think about where it leads?"

Alphys manages to shoot him a look that's both withering and terrified, which is an impressive feat unto itself, and Sans laughs.

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"I wasn't, wasn't g-gonna," says Alphys, with a spurt of something resembling courage before abruptly losing momentum.

Sans grins at her.

"Yeah," he says simply. "I never do either."

Alphys looks back at him for a long moment, scaly brows knit together, the concern and the full knowledge of the sheer _hypocrisy_ of her concern written all over her too-worried features, until finally she tears her gaze away, looks back at the fragments of torn magazines and old tires and whatever else gets bundled up and thrown down here, only to spill off the lip of the dump and into the empty blackness below.

"D-do, um," she says, halting and slow, her claws wringing in nervous asynchrony, "do you maybe wanna...go back to the lab and, and watch something stupid for a few hours?"

"How stupid are we talkin' here?" says Sans, without missing a beat, his eyesockets dark and empty as he looks out across the emptiness and wonders if ͈̿ͨͩ̊ ̡̬̫̣̤͎̫ ̻̇͛ͫ͑̇͒̾ ͔̥͚̋́̽̌̍͑ ̼͚̳͈̓͆ ̼̳ͧ͐͆͛̚ ̫͉̪ͭ̾ ͕̫͉̲̹̻͔ ̗̯͛̋͆̋ͧͅ ͓̼̹̺ͬ̓̐̈́ͧͩ ̜͓̠̻̦̥͜ͅ ̯̜͙̞̩͓̀ ̸̗̘̖̳̞̘̐̽ͯͅ ͇̘ͧ̓́ ͖́̄͜ ̱̲̼̯̂̚ can see him.

"W-well! I found this really, um...it looks like it might be the n-next _Plan 9,_ really."

Sans stands there, his knees too stiff, his slippers growing soggier and soggier as the water flows evenly over them, cool and filthy and laminar, staining the pink fuzz with brown and green.

One step forward.

"We could order something r- _really_ bad for us," Alphys continues softly, almost to herself, "a-and be the erudite garbage cans we are for a little bit."

With more effort than Sans thinks he might have in him, he turns away from the looming dark and grins at her.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I'd like that," says Sans, and the edges of his smile have softened almost imperceptibly, and for a moment he lets her see just how tired he feels. He waits for her to gasp or stammer or say something appropriately appalled about how he looks just...just so goddamn worn out and tired and _defeated,_ but she doesn't.

She just holds out a hand, and he takes it.


	5. five times sans tried not to care

> **i. someone who sincerely loves bad jokes.**

_Knock knock,_ goes bony knuckles against the stone of the door, and, as is typical, no one answers. It ain't such a difficult prospect to fill in the _who's there_ in the empty space that follows, and tellin' jokes to nonresponsive audiences just happens to be one of his finer talents. 

So, you know, it's kind of a real shocker when someone finally answers. And that one-sided banter turns into an exchange of bad puns denser than the flurrying snow, turns into recipes exchanged and anecdotes about the coolest little brothers possible, turns into one day when that lady just ain't laughing very much at all. 

The thing about this is - 

The thing is. 

The thing _is._

She tried, at first, to give him her name. And he'd overrode her. Kept overriding her until she asked him, point-blank, and he just said calmly that wasn't how he rolled. It's more fun like this, he'd said, and he's not sure she'd one-hundred percent believed him, but at least she'd gone with it. 

But who's he fooling, right? In between sentry shifts and helping Papyrus train for Royal Guardom and tinkering with readings in the back of the house and tryin' to trace the anchorpoints of where the anomaly digs its insidious little roots into the fabric of space and time and bends it to suit it - in between all _that,_ it's easier to act like everything is just...water off a bird's back. A chicken's back? He's not rightly sure how the expression goes, but that's fine. There's a general "water off the back" theme. 

So he don't know her name. He don't know anything about her except that she likes to bake, she sometimes helps patch up monsters that get banged up in the RUINs (by what, he don't ask. He don't wanna know the answer.), she knows the spiders there real well, well enough to be on first-name terms with the proverbial queen of 'em herself, and she's - lonely. She's real, real lonely. 

Heh heh. 

_Bonely._

All right. So. Maybe he ain't as detached from all this as he thought. Maybe it's gotten to be somethin' a little bigger than, heh, a bedtime story for his bro, a fun little witty thing he tells people that makes 'em shake their head in disbelief, like he's spinnin' this story out for 'em in real time. 

But damned if he's gonna let anyone in on _that_ little secret. 

> **ii. i hate making promises.**

All right, all right, you wanna hear more about the anonymous Door Lady. Don't look at me like that, I know it's true. You wanna hear more about her. Wanna see if her story got any real sorta closer, huh? _Sans, did you ever learn her name? Sans, did you ever get to see her face-to-face?_

Don't ask questions you don't wanna know the answers to, buddo. 

But, uh, anyway. To answer _some_ of those hypothetical questions, but not _all_ of them (stories are much better when you don't tie off _every_ loose end, yeah?), one of these days this exchange rate of puns and bad jokes and quirky stories don't go so great. The lady behind the door, she ain't laughing so much. At all, really. The most Sans gets is a pity chuckle here and there, and it's a half-assed effort at best. It's gettin' to the point that it's starting to be more worrying than anything else, and he doesn't wanna be _that guy_ and ask something inane like, _uh, hey, you okay over there?_ Because, a) he doesn't care, b) she knows he doesn't care, c) it would throw off the whole rhythm of this acquaintanceship, which is _all it is_ and they both know it, d) he, uh. He's comin' up with way too many reasons for this, isn't he? Damn it, this is why he hates listing, just on _principle._

Turns out he don't have to ask anything at all, though. 'Cause it occurs to him half a second later that this lady is not just upset, she is _crying_ and, yeah, _now_ he feels like a dick. He shifts uncomfortably in the snow, and that's when he just - well, honestly, he just kinda regrets saying anything at all, but he pipes up, because he might be a jerk but he's not a _complete_ jerk. Except, who's he kidding? He totally is. And he's utterly transparent about it. 

But still. 

"What's, uh," says Sans easily, as light and friendly as if he were making the same kinda conversation they always make, "what's up?" 

From behind the door, there's not much but silence. And then when she finally says somethin', her voice is all thick and it's like she's been _crying_ and goddamnit. Goddamnit. 

"If a human ever comes through this door," she says, haltingly, as if the words have to claw their way out of her throat. Maybe they are. "Could you please, please promise something?" 

_Promise._ Heh, well, if he's honest here (which he never is, it's part of his charm), that word alone would be enough to get him to blip on outta there. So long, farewell, thanks for all the jokes, and it was real nice not gettin' to know ya, lady, but promises? No. Nah. Nope. He does _not do_ promises, and he holds this as a policy. 

Maybe if he _had_ just up and zipped his coccyx on out, he wouldn't've. But as the silence persisted and the words hung in the frozen air and it became horribly, _horribly_ clear that this lady is just...desperately trying to hold it together and failing so miserably that even he, a rotten little skeleton with a SOUL so pitted over with apathy and frustration and selfish goddamn sentimentality, can't bear to let her stay like that a moment longer. 

"I hate makin' promises," he says, quietly, and there's a hitch in the ragged rhythm of her breathing for a second and he feels like _such an ass_ but he ducks his skull in a weak little nod, remembers she can't _see him nodding,_ and then he adds, the words nearly inaudible but for the bite of the consonants: 

"But I think, just this once - I'll make an exception." 

> **iii. to a tea**

The king's kind of a sad guy underneath the smiles and soft speech. The rest of the Underground might not always know it, but Sans - heh, when you spend years cultivating that grinning, carefree persona, you kinda get to learn how to recognize it others. The way they shove that unpleasantness deep down and act like it don't hit 'em harder than an orange attack to the chest. He can see a guy smile and know when it's a false, hastily glued-on thing, mostly 'cause his smiles are exactly that sorta thing about ninety-percent of the time. Minus the "hastily" part. He more or less just kinda forgot how else one emotes. 

But, you know, skeleton. At least he's got the excuse. The king doesn't, not really. Even when he's not out and about - getting rarer these days, and did he think no one would notice? - and bein' the righteous figurehead and hope for the future monsterkind, he still smiles patiently, pretending there isn't that specter of melancholia pinned behind each word. That tremor to his speech - it's hard to pick up if you don't know what you're lookin' for, but it's _there,_ unspeakably. Especially since Sans _does_ what he's lookin' for. 

"There are no reports of additional humans?" Asgore prompts over the quiet trickle of tea from kettle to cup. Sans isn't particularly a tea guy, but he knows how to be polite, and Asgore drinking tea alone is about the saddest thing he can imagine right now. Next to, y'know, trying to console a crying lady through a stone door by swearing a promise he's still cursing himself for making. 

"Nada," says Sans. He draws the cup nearer with the scrape of ceramic over wood and takes a thoughtful sip. It's a strange, flowery kind of blend, with a flavor he can't put a name to, but it tastes all right, so he figures he can live with it. "Sorry, your Maj." 

"It is fine, Sans," the king says quietly and, nah, it's not really fine. He knows it's not really fine. He just doesn't think Asgore wants anyone else to know it's not really fine, so he keeps his damn mouth shut and drinks his tea. 

"I apologize for making you come all the way up here." For a moment the king's expression looks - pained, almost, but it dissolves in the same instant in forms. "I realize how far away it is from Snowdin." 

Sans flaps a dismissive hand in the king's direction. 

"Nah, fuhgeddaboutit." 

Asgore frowns, but says nothing, even if...yeah, you know, it's kinda occurring to Sans that there was literally no reason he had to haul tailbone all the way up here, was there? Could've just as easily written a note for half the effort. 

But it's kinda obvious, like he said. It is kinda really, ridiculously, _painfully_ obvious, just how goddamn _lonely_ the king is. He's got nothing to pass the time but the human SOULs (and boy, does that sound like a heaping load of guilt on top of everything), the flowers he cares for too meticulously, the grayscale trappings of an old life that's long since disintegrated beneath the weight of his decisions. 

Sans will never admit to being sentimental. He still, uh, kinda considers maybe saying something. Nothing big, just something like a - a reminder that the king ain't that alone, really? 

But he is, and that's the thing. Anything else would be a pity remark, a lie, a vague platitude, a thin drape over the truth, the real _marrow_ the matter, which is that the king's got a gaping hole in his life that nothing's really ever gonna fix. 

Sans kinda knows that feeling a little too well. 

He knows it well enough to know it'd be an insult to say anything. 

So he doesn't. 

> **iv. i guess that means**

"Woah, you look REALLY pissed off." 

And they do. Their eyes burn into his, the force of their glare unbroken by the vast hallway of distance between them, practically vibrating with the tension that has their knuckles white on the handle of their knife, their curled fist shaking at their side. 

Sans laughs. His grin is as hollow as his sockets, opened wide and black and gaping. 

"Did I getcha?" 

Now the kid, their face ain't too expressive, just as a general rule. But when your own face is pretty solidly set in its perpetual rictus, you get real good at pickin' up little tells. The tightening of corners of a mouth, the scrunching of lines around the eyes at half-mast. The clenching and contracture of muscle. The slowness and deliberate pacing to their steps. 

So, essentially, right now? All signs point to _pissed._

Shouldn't be leavin' such a profound weight in his metaphorical gut, is the thing. He'd pulled his trick. He'd trapped them in a hug. He can just picture the squish of bone penetrating flesh, spearing organs, spattering red across the gold-tiled for, air ripe with the iron tang of it. He can picture it, because in all likelihood, he's lived it. Don't even need to check the values and flags to be assured of that one. Yep, he got 'em pretty good. 

Except now, heh. Well. He'd well and truly played that card and won, like he'd known he would, and that little one-off trick is never gonna pull the rug out from under 'em again. 

"Well," says Sans, arms spread wide in his artless, exaggerated shrug, "if you came back anyway...I guess that means we never really WERE friends, huh?" 

He tries for another laugh. It emerges a knowing, resigned huff, the underline of a conclusion he'd already come to but must not have wanted to admit to himself. 

He looks at the kid, shaking in their shoes with barely-repressed rage, ready to lunge at him and _finish what they started._ He looks at 'em, and the words leak on out before he can really put a stop to 'em. 

"Don't tell that to the other Sans-es," he says, the words not _breaking_ but coming damn close, "okay?" 

The kid doesn't say a damn thing. They just wait for the next salvo of radiuses to spring at 'em from all sides. Not that he gives 'em what they're looking for, exactly. Nah. Time to change things up again. 

It occurs to him only after he watches the red gleam of their wavering SOUL break and buckle and shatter beneath the searing, scintillating, disintegrating blast of an open-mawed skull that he knows exactly why he said what he did. 'Cause, uh, to be frank? ( _I'll be "frank" with you,"_ says a him in another time, the lucky fucking bastard.) He knows exactly how to quantify that expression that kid was wearing, 'cause it was the same one that almost tore through his jovial, perpetual grin. 

Betrayal. 

Yeah, he's starting to think he knows that feeling real well. Real, real well. 

> **v. we never really were friends**

He's polite. He waves to the kids, he nods his skull, he says hello, he jokes with 'em and watches TV with 'em and watches 'em play video games and makes horrible jokes about whatever ridiculous situations their pixellated avatars get themselves into. He makes light of it, it's what he does. Like he didn't kill all three of 'em a hundred times over, separately or together, don't really matter. Like he's not to blame for the way Chara flinches whenever Toriel pulls 'em into a hug, or how Frisk sometimes startles when he shows up in their periphery, a white-and-blue be-jacketed blur of grinning bones and broken promises. Or how the king and queen's son - well, he's the one Sans arguably spends time with the least. Mostly on account of the fact that he's pretty sure the kid detests him, and even if he don't really blame him for much and he is _trying,_ really he is, more than he's maybe tried for anything, he's got enough tact to respect the kid's opinion of him and keep his distance. 

Honestly, the three of 'em, he doesn't hate 'em. Not any of 'em. Hate takes time, and hate takes work, and he's got a surface world to enjoy before someone gets bored and spins the clock back again, assuming any one of 'em _can._

It gets to a head, though, one day, when he's just reclining on the couch at Toriel's place when Frisk wanders along (recognizable thanks to the color scheme, which they never relinquished even if Toriel has bought them shirts of _varying_ colors and spectrums since they moved in) and plunks on down beside him. 

"Chara and Asriel think you hate them," they announce, without preamble. 

Um. Okay. Wow, kid. 

Sans cracks open an eyesocket and regards them blankly as he tries to marshal his thoughts. 

Truth be told, he ain't exactly sure what to say to that. 

"I don't hate them," he says, which comes out sounding like more of a lie than anything. 

Frisk folds their arms and looks _indignant_ and _concerned_ and okay, c'mon kid, that just isn't _fair._

"You never talk to them," they say decisively. "You just kind of _stare_ at them, like you're trying to figure them out. _Both_ of them. And you think you're not being obvious, but you are. We _all_ know it." 

Oh boy. Look who's been a right little detective, huh? 

Sans reaches up, passes a hand over the crown of his skull and starts scratching at his cervical vertebrae. 

"I don't hate them," he says again, tiredly. 

"Then _prove_ it," says Frisk, levering a firm look in his direction and god _damn_ they may not be biologically related to Toriel but they might as well be, because they could give that lady's strict glower a _run for its money._

At this point, he thinks it would just be significantly easier to move out of the complex across the street, pack his damn bags, and set course for _as far away as fucking possible._ Because, honestly, spending his time trying to... _connect_ with either of those kids on a deep and personal level when he's pretty damn sure neither of 'em want anything to do with him, well, it sounds like a whole lotta work. Maybe more work than he's ever had to do in his life. 

For a long moment, he lies there. He contemplates the ceiling. The ceiling has no answers for him, as expected. 

Then Sans gets up, and makes his way to the room the royal kids share. He hesitates again before raising a hand and knocking, and he'd swear to _god_ that the echoes of knuckles against a stone door ring hollowly at him from on the other side of another time. 

God _damnit,_ kid. 

It's at times like these that he wishes he honestly didn't care as much as he actually does.

> **vi. and the one time he really didn't.**

They're still milling around uselessly when he makes it to the scene, the rising drone of murmurs and whispers abruptly cutting into silence when he advances, grinning evenly, looking between every one of them with a grim, steadfast patience. 

"Okay!" says Sans, clapping his bony hands together in a crisp, too-bright movement. "Who wants to go first, huh?" 

Every one of 'em exchanges looks with each other, not a single one wanting to be the guy to step up to the plate. They don't wanna take responsibility? All right. That's fine. 

Sans trains his stare on the first one that makes unintended eye contact, the lights in his sockets faded and flinted. 

"Start from the beginning," he says cheerfully. 

The bastard looks like he wants to do _anything_ but, but Sans waits him out, unblinking, merciless, refusing to look away, until finally they start to speak, slow and halting. 

"W-we, um," says the fidgety son of a bitch, twiddling their claws, "we were just a-adjusting the circuit boards, and we didn't realize th-that, um. That, that kid, you know, who likes help around here?" 

"I know the kid," Sans says mildly. "And I know the doc said you weren't supposed to let 'em in anymore. Real funny how you all seemed for forget, huh?" 

What little momentum his informant seems to have bought for himself stutters and dies. They look away. No one else seems eager to take their place. 

All right. That's fine. He's got everything he needs to fill in the copious blanks. 

"You re-calibrated the circuit boards," says Sans, piecin' together the narrative in real time. "You miscalculated. And someone just happened to be the collateral damage, huh? That someone bein' the kid who, as I'm sure you don't need remindin', shouldn't've even been here in the first place." 

He smiles. 

"Am I getting warm?" 

"W-we didn't mean - " one of the braver assistants starts up, spluttering and defiant, abruptly locating their courage. 

He doesn't need to raise his voice. He don't need to do much of anything. He keeps talking, and the room is plunged into silence. Hah, yep. They sure feel _bad_ for what they've done now, huh? 

"You didn't mean it," says Sans. "Well, why don't we tell the kid's parents, huh? Let 'em know that it's all good, sorry their kid got vaporized or demolecularized or whatever the _hell_ it is you did to 'em, but it's okay because _you didn't mean it."_

"That's not - " 

Sans laughs. 

"I don't care," he says, the words heavy and sick and vibrating with somethin' he doesn't wanna put a name to. "I really don't. But I'll tell ya one thing: I'm not gonna be the one that tells 'em." 

A few of 'em blanch. One of 'em who doesn't look physiologically capable of blanching flattens their ears. 

"I don't care how you all figure it out," he says, and his smile grows wider and wider and there's an icy edge to the way he sweeps every one of 'em with his look. "Draw straws. Flip a coin." 

His eyes go dark. 

**"Figure it out."**

And then he's gone. 

Not like that kid is, heh. Nah, he's just up and walkin' out the door, the old-fashioned way. All he can do now is hope - and he _hates_ hope, really he does, _"hope"_ is just another, happier word for _"delusion"_ \- that wherever that poor kid is now, they ain't aware of their state of being. 

That would be a cruelty he can't even imagine.


End file.
